Climate action

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
- Greta Thunberg at the UN on 23-Sep-2019. 

• This is her best speech.  It captures the anxiety of a generation and those living on the front lines of famines, heat waves, droughts, and sea level rise.
• They whispered to her, “you cannot withstand the storm”. She whispered back, “I am the storm”!  You go girl.
• Why is Trump there? He doesn't believe in Climate Change. 
• On 26-Nov-2018 asked about the findings in a report warning of devastating effects of climate change that unchecked global warming would wreak havoc on the US economy, US President Donald Trump said: "I don't believe it." 
• I feel no need to meet President Trump. My message to President Trump is just listen to science, and he obviously doesn't do that. - Greta Thunberg
• Pro-tip: Yielding to the demands of a catastrophizing 16 year-old who has no experience with unintended consequences is a bad idea. We are not beginning a mass extinction. Both mankind and nature can and will adapt to the modest increases in temps. Don't fall for the drama. - Doug Sheridan
• We have taken planet stability for granted and our stable, reliable planet no longer exists. What we do in the next few years, will determine the next few thousand years. - David Attenborough. 
• She is amazing. The only reason people can make fun of this statement is because they still feel safe and their bellies are full. In about 20 years nothing will be funny anymore. The older people will die but millennial's have the possibility of horror.

• Greta has done more in 16 years to raise climate awareness than you or I have in our lifetime.
• Rich people will be ok. Poor people will not.
• We have to look for a solution, because she is right - people are dying and ultimately the planet will die if we don’t do something fast.
• The earth will fix itself by killing off as many humans as it can. That’s the only way balance will be restored.
• Everyone, can fight, climate change every day,  just by making the right choice of food.
• No one is willing to live without modern luxury and necessities to deal with it.

WTO and globalisation

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in 1995. Two major changes agreed were: (i)  not to impose import duties in excess of certain agreed rates and (ii) not to manufacture a patented item using alternate process. 

• The large-scale imports of goods from China taking place at present is a consequence of  provision (i) of the WTO which we willingly accepted.
• The provision (ii) restricted the growth of our pharmaceutical companies.
• The drugs invented by MNCs were hitherto produced by our pharma companies using alternate processes and making them available at a fraction of the MNC's price and that freedom was lost.
• The major benefit expected from WTO was that our farmers will be able to export their produce to the developed countries and get much higher prices. But the developed countries fudged the rules of the WTO and continued to provide subsidies to their farmers and that deprived our farmers ability to export their goods. 
• Thus the WTO and the globalisation has become largely a losing proposition for us. It has even become a losing proposition for developed countries like USA as well. They find that their jobs are disappearing. 
• The WTO needs to shape up for the US to stay a part of it, said former Trump trade advisor Dan DiMicco. He further said that WTO has enabled China’s bad behavior and allowed the country to manipulate its currency from 1995 to 2015. Nobody has held them accountable.
• President Donald Trump told that the WTO has treated the US “very badly". Trump also said "I hope they change their ways. We’re not planning anything now, but if they don’t treat us properly we will be doing something.” Trump told his advisors, “I don’t know why we’re in it. The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to screw the US"
• India has walked out of the WTO mini-ministerial being held in Geneva in July 2006 to thrash out the thorny agriculture and industrial tariff issues, with the US refusing to agree for wider cuts in farm subsidies. The Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said: "We came here to negotiate, but there is no space for negotiations. We are on 8 to 9% growth. I've come here looking for a trade deal which helps me to reach 10 to 11%. I have not come here to get a trade deal which makes me go to 4 or 5%." 
• The failure of WTO to move ahead in framing rules for global trade means that globalization is retreating.
• Our Mughal rulers thought that by allowing the British to trade in India will be beneficial for the country. Similarly, we have agreed and signed the WTO treaty because we thought we would get foreign investments and access to foreign markets for our exports.
• The globalisation under the Mughal rulers and the WTO are fundamentally similar. In both the cases, we ceded our sovereign rights willingly in the belief that the benefits will be more than the costs. In the former case the benefits to us were less than the costs and that arose Mahatma Gandhi and we retracted from that globalisation. Very much the same is happening with the WTO today.
• The globalisation succeeds only if it provides more benefits than costs to all the member countries. We can today walk out of the WTO because it is not beneficial to us. People are the ultimate sovereign and no power on earth can take their sovereignty away. The people will rise no matter how strong the forces of globalisation are.
• The challenge is to inform the people of the benefits and costs of globalisation to make an informed choice to withdraw or not. The worry is that our intellectuals will get coopted and misinform the people of the true costs of present globalisation.
• Our government should wake up, walk out of WTO and start supporting domestic businesses instead of running after MNCs.

Read the source article

Copying western models and implementing in India without proper groundwork is futile. The more we stay in WTO and globalisation, the more our poor and peasants would lose and suffer. Since the present WTO model can't be modified so easily due to the influence of vested interests like China, the only option India has is that it should walk out of WTO and work in the direction of mutually beneficial bilateral treaties and self-sufficiency.

Turkey's woes today

Turkey's currency, the lira, has hit record lows, creating a headache for the country's president and pushing up prices on everyday items. Although the exact cause is, of course, hard to say, tourism bookings to Turkey have gone up in recent months. Holiday company Thomas Cook has seen a 63% rise in bookings to Turkey.

• On Fri Aug 10, 2018, the US dollar would buy almost six Turkish lira; at the end of January, it would have got you less than four. The Turkey's currency Lira, has lost more than 34% of its value against the US dollar.
• The stock market has also fallen 17%.
• Government borrowing costs have risen to 18% a year.
• Inflation in Turkey has hit 15%.

The causes are:

• Investors are worried that Turkish companies that borrowed heavily to profit from a construction boom will struggle to repay loans in dollars and euros, as the weakened lira means there is now more to pay back.
• Turkey's worsening relations with Trump administration with sanctions due to the detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who has has been held for nearly two years over alleged links to political groups.
• On Fri Aug 10, 2018, the US dealt Turkey and the lira a further blow when Trump said he had approved the doubling of tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium.

These problems were compounded by a political set-up which is unconducive to proper economic management. Much of the recent concern has been fueled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's economic policy. Flustered by the current situation, President Erdogan urged supporters not to worry, saying that while overseas investors had dollars, Turks had Allah. Meanwhile, UK Foreign Office recommends against all but essential travel to a number of regions and says not to travel within 10 km of the Syrian border at all, due to the ongoing Syrian war. The US rates Turkey at level three, urging people to reconsider travel to the region.

Read the source article

Although far better, India's direction is Turkish way. Today INR stands eroded by 16% against USD in the past 2 years. In 2018, INR lost 8% value against USD. Our FE reserves is looking southwards. Trade deficit increasing due to reckless import of non-essential items from China. Exports stagnating, inflation above 5% are other negatives. Flight of dollars is due to Fed Reserve increasing interest rates indicates our vulnerability. Increasing oil prices suggest that INR will remain under pressure for many more quarters. Unfortunately, our government doesn't have any plans to resurrect while preferring to be in observing mode perennially. 

Modi's lies - what it means to India?

US President Donald Trump had spoken 2,140 lies, or uttered several such inaccuracies in his public life since becoming a Republican contender for the White House. Trump is not a stand-up comic artist jocularly falsifying facts to arouse amusement, or a founder of a fake news website running a political agenda. He is not just only the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military power, but also has the largest nuclear button in the world at dangerously close proximity.

• If the most powerful leader of the free world cannot be trusted on account of his mental equanimity or is of questionable credibility, we clearly have a lot to worry about. By an uncanny coincidence, the world’s largest democracy, India, has a similar predicament; fake news, post-truth and alternative facts dominate mainstream media.
• Politicians regularly indulge in making outrageous statements and get away with it. Since their brazen lies go unchallenged and social media amplifies that mendacity, they inflict incalculable damage to society due to proliferation of misinformation, calumny and distorted history. 
• We as a nation are far too lazy to contradict the negative torrent of fake news with ulterior motives or delusional in the  false notion that automatically people will segregate the wheat from the chaff in the long-term. Or we under the current dispensation are just too scared? Several have surrendered the fight as they believe it is a Sisyphean exercise. Either way, the consequences can be serious. We are in a quicksand, and sinking.
• From the moment, Modi became the PM in 2014, India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the target of an orchestrated BJP campaign of calumny and character assassination. A malevolent media campaign was unleashed to malign Nehru, by insinuating that there was an attempt to cover-up the untimely death of the valiant freedom-fighter and former Congress president Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in an unfortunate air crash. The BJP, using right-wing stooges with literary pretensions, dubious historians, indulgent media editors delighted to be co-conspirators and disgruntled family members of Netaji launched a vicious assault on Nehru’s character. India’s finest statesman was being stigmatised by snake oil salesmen.
• The BJP was clearly relishing the malicious and disingenuous deluge as Modi gave a generous reception to the noble cause of knowing the ultimate truth on Netaji’s death. A member of the Bose family joined the saffron brigade, contested the elections, and lost. The Sangh Parivar went to the extent of creating a fabricated letter wherein Nehru called Bose a "war criminal". It was utter balderdash, but who cared? The fact is we should.
• Modi’s speech in Parliament on February 7, 2018,  he hemorrhaged truth by saying that had Sardar Patel been the first PM, Kashmir would have been totally ours. Sure, if my aunt wore a pyjama she would be my uncle. It was a convenient political twist with no historical foundations, but Modi continues to violate the basic precept of political morality by populating ludicrous charges on all and sundry, especially targeting the Nehru-Gandhi family. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel in our daily discourse.
• Politics was always about perceptions, but in the world of Facebook feeds, YouTube videos, Twitter trolls and WhatsApp forwards, truth itself is subjected to Amazonian proportions of vulnerability. No one is safe. No one has a constant bulletproof against sustained malignant accusations. There are no vanguards.
• It is a disconcerting reality that the process of transparent news dissemination has become carnivalesque and that Netaji indeed died in the plane crash at Taipei on August 18, 1945, was acknowledged by Modi sarkar in an obscure part of a daily newspaper.
• The vituperative anti-Nehru strategy was quickly consigned to the backwaters. Several susceptible minds subjected to the carcinogenic tirade against Nehru, would still be wondering  what is the real truth? That residual doubt that lingers long is exactly what fake news really wishes to accomplish. 
• Remember that the human mind can be extremely fragile to sustained bulldozing. Recollect the Holocaust? That Netaji named one of his infantry brigades in the Indian National Army after Nehru, or that the Nehru wore his barrister robes for the first time to defend the INA army soldiers charged with treason by the British are nonchalantly overlooked.
• Fake news, consciously elliptical, still triumphs. It is like heads I win, tails you lose.
• Another masterly deception is a work-in-progress and it even boasts of a grand edifice, the Statue of Unity, allegedly the tallest such in the world. Modi’s ideological mentors and political strategists is the RSS, without whose support he would not have even become the chief minister of Gujarat. It would seem like political incongruity that Modi is lionising Sardar Patel, the same man who banned the RSS for creating a poisonous environment that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. 
• Nehru and Patel were brothers-in-arms, each other’s conscience keepers, but Modi and the BJP are burning the midnight oil to tell the country otherwise. It is a cunning project to deceive India. Political hypocrisy has reached epic proportions.
• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation. Savarkar himself miraculously escaped conviction by the skin of his teeth. Modi has publicly called Savarkar a patriot. The rest is left for public wisdom.

Read the source article

US debt spiral

By the year 2020, the United States is expected to have a total national debt load of approximately $20 trillion dollars. The cost to service the public portion of that debt is expected to be nearly $800 billion per year, and that's assuming that we don't encounter significantly higher interest rates.

  

• The combination of high debt, mounting spending pressures from population aging, and moderate growth pose the risk of fiscal/financial crisis – a low probability event but one with potentially enormous costs for the U.S. and global economies. 
• To reduce that risk, the US Administration and Congress should restore the health of the country's public finances through gradual but sustained further reductions in the deficit.
• Economic growth is vital for a nation's ability to sustain its public debt. Many debt crises in emerging economies have been caused by declines in growth. In advanced economies, the largest increases in debt ratios occurred when policymakers mistook a prolonged decline in growth for a temporary recession, and failed to cut spending or increase taxes. 
• Economic growth is key because when growth declines, revenues decline commensurately, and governments are reluctant to cut spending in response, so that more debt accumulates.
• Living with high debt is living dangerously. As larger deficits are financed, the debt also swells.
• An interest-debt spiral is inconceivable for the United States, long considered a safe haven and benefiting from the "exorbitant privilege" stemming from the dollar's role as a reserve currency. A country's status as a safe haven is ultimately based on investors' perceptions, which can change abruptly. With privilege comes responsibility, and preserving the credibility of the U.S. public finances is vital not only for its citizens but also for the stability of the international financial system.
• If it were possible to sustain high inflation and low interest rates, investors would take their funds abroad. That rules out the "financial repression" strategy. Alternative approaches such as outright default would be even more disruptive. To avoid spooking investors, candidates should not suggest inflation or default as potential means of slashing the debt. That leaves old-fashioned fiscal adjustment through spending cuts – which are increasingly difficult as population aging adds pressures on entitlement programs – and revenue increases. The pace of adjustment should be gradual, in order not to disrupt the global recovery. The U.S. debt ratio may thus be expected, at best, to decline slowly. 
• Imposing statutory caps on domestic and military spending will definitely temper the deficit but will get swamped by healthcare and social security spending that will rise with aging population. Also Trump wants to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure in 10 years, surge in military spending and large tax cuts for individuals and corporations which will only increase overall debt.
• Deficits are helpful when economies are in recession. But when they are in near full employment , as US economy is now, deficits should be kept below 3% to avoid drag on investment or worse a financial crisis.
• The share of public debt is expected to reach 89% of GDP by 2027, increasing the risk of financial crisis and raise possibility that investors will become skittish about financing government's borrowing, although many countries have far higher debt levels.
• Besides deficit, tepid economic growth is also a concern. Over next 10 years real economic growth may not exceed 1.9% per annum. The steadily growing economy appears to be giving policy makers more time.
• Prepare to live dangerously for several more years.

Any person or corporation or state or nation, which can't repay smaller debt today will certainly can't repay bigger debt in future. So it is in the interest of lenders to stop restructuring of loans, that has very poor track record (1 in 100 success rate or even less), and stop dealing with such over spending entities after few warnings. Eventually, such debts will get written off in some form or other. But lenders are also helpless about parking their earnings or trade surpluses safely. Balance is the key! Every one must learn to balance income & expenditure, imports & exports so on on real time basis. Not doing so is recklessness or irresponsibility or both. Stay away from such people.

India's Freedom & Liberalisation

• India was at a crossroads 70 years ago when it made choices that were enshrined in the constitution, so that its workers and peasants were freed from class and caste oppression.
• Nehru said at the midnight when India woke up to freedom. “To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.”
• The zamindars and landlords finding that open defense of landlord's interest was no longer feasible, switched over to communalism for their class defense.
• Pakistan's falsity of religion-based nationalism and a state was founded on theocracy. It was one area where the Hindu right-wing emulates its sworn enemy and India was sought to be converted into a theocratic state called Hindu Rashtra. 
• M.S. Golwalkar, RSS supreme leader for more than 30 years minced no words: “The non-Hindu peoples in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture…. In one word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less no preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights.”
• It is no accident that the Hindutva forces had nothing to do with anti-colonial struggle and independence. Infact, the RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar had so little sympathy for the anti-colonial struggle that he thought that the British would have to be invited back shortly after Independence in order to govern India. Today they laud Ambedkar today for sheer opportunistic reasons.
• The first major victim of this narrow cultural nationalism of the Indian right-wing was the Father of the Nation. After being driven to the margins of Indian politics in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the right wing RSS and its latest political incarnation, the BJP, is at the helm of India, now.
• The slide started post-Nehru and was complete in 1991, when the Congress went back on its promises and ushered in the neoliberal order. The Congress ceased the cause of workers and peasants ostensibly called national interest, but in reality for the material prosperity of the merchants and manufacturers. Now with the BJP unburdened by the legacy of any egalitarian struggle, the free people of India are under the onslaught of neoliberalism and rabid communalism.
• Ambedkar argued that the political equality, guaranteed by the constitution, would get jeopardised if there was no corresponding movement towards social and economic equality. The first setback to independent India's was its inability to carry out any significant land redistribution. The top 15 per cent of landowners continued to hold the same percentage of land area as before. Dalits, the landless class, who had been denied the right to own land under the old system continued to remain landless and therefore both socially and economically disempowered. By the end of the 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru was worried about growing wealth and income inequality in the country, he has to set up the Mahalanobis Committee to inquire into it.
• The per capita annual foodgrain availability, which had been around 200 kgs at the beginning of the 20th century in “British India” declined to 148.5 kgs during the 1939-44 and even lower to 136.8 kgs in 1945-46, was pushed up close to 180 kgs by the end of the 1980's. It has since declined, over the neoliberal period, reaching 163 kg for the years 2012-14.
• The spontaneity of capitalism was breaking the bounds set by state control. And soon it was to jettison the institute a regime of neoliberalism, under which the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy got closely integrated with globalised finance capital.
• The economic travails of the dirigiste regime arising from the sluggish growth of the home market owing to growing economic inequality, its loss of social support among the people for the same reason, and the big bourgeoisie’s wish to break out of it has contributed towards effecting a transition from dirigisme to neoliberalism.
• Neoliberalism greatly accentuated the increase in economic inequality, though it accelerated the growth rate in the tertiary sector. The acceleration in growth rate was resolved through larger exports of services, larger elite consumption of luxury goods, and the effects of asset price bubbles. The top 1 per cent of households in India currently owns 60 per cent of the country’s total wealth puts India with the fastest increases in asset inequality.
• The process of primitive accumulation of taking over of peasant's land 'for a song' for corporate projects and squeezing the peasants through higher input prices, by withdrawing subsidies and the drying up of institutional credit, but without commensurably higher output prices. These output prices, especially of commercial crops are allowed to fluctuate widely with world market prices. Even phenomena like Demonetisation and the GST are also mechanisms for imposing primitive accumulation upon the petty production sector. 
• A tragic consequence of this primitive accumulation at the expense of peasant agriculture has been the suicides of over three lakh peasants over the last two decades. And large numbers of peasants have left agriculture and migrated to cities in search of jobs, which are not being created to an adequate extent despite the apparently high GDP growth. The net result has been a proliferation of casual employment, intermittent employment, part-time employment and disguised unemployment. The growth in the casualisation of employment and privatisation of public sector units have weakened trade unions. While capital is international, workers are still organised along national lines, making national unions ineffective.
• The middle-class segment that has done well out of globalisation, owing to the outsourcing of services from the metropolis, and owing to the rise in the share of surplus which supports a range of activities from finance to advertising, has expectedly belonged to the upper castes which have been privileged enough to acquire the skills to make use of the opportunities that have been opening up. Since these beneficiaries attribute their own success not to their privilege but to their talent, the inevitable conclusion is drawn that those who are excluded from such jobs are untalented. An impression spreads that children from the oppressed castes do not make it because they lack talent, which boosts casteist prejudice.
• Development in India started on a wrong foot by eschewing land redistribution and the pursuit of capitalist development contributed to growing socio-economic inequality, that got a free run under neoliberalism. The adherents of Hindutva in power this social counter-revolution is being carried forward with a vengeance. India is not a fascist state, but the growing socio-economic inequality is destroying the constitutional provision of political equality.
• Fascism arises when the system besieged by crisis is challenged by a threat from the revolutionary forces whom fascism is used for eliminating. Fascism grows when the system is at a dead end and when the working-class movement is not in a position to mount a challenge. That is when large sections of the people flock to fascist movements, not because it provides a credible way out, but because it projects a messiah, it resorts to flamboyant but meaningless rhetoric, it appeals to unreason, and it holds not the system but the “other” (the Jews or the Muslims or whatever) as responsible for the travails of the people.
• It may seem intriguing that neoliberalism has reached a dead end, Modi promises even greater neoliberal reforms while a Trump rails against neoliberalism. But this contrast between two current manifestations of fascism arises because neither has a coherent programme anyway for overcoming the crisis and the frustration gripping the people. Both are essentially purveyors of unreason for whom the economic agenda as a thought-out rational programme is incidental.
• The corporate-financial oligarchy adopts the fascist movement, finances the fascist movement, and promotes the fascist movement, which exists independently of it. Fascism provides “stability” and also an ideal ideological prop for neoliberal capitalism. Fascists in government represent, in the Indian context, an alliance between corporate capital and Hindutva. The fact that capital is globalised while the state remains a nation state entails that even a fascist nation state must abide by the wishes of globalised capital (to prevent capital flight) and this fact restricts its ability to overcome the crisis.
• At peril are the gains and achievements made by the movements for national independence, socialism and social justice. India is once again is at crossroads where the choices it made 70 years ago are being undermined.

The left and democratic forces can have an alternative agenda that promotes equality, that strengthens democracy, and is willing to withdraw from the neoliberal regime. They should for instance have an agenda of introducing a set of universal, justiciable economic rights, to supplement the political rights that the constitution guarantees. These can include the right to food, the right to employment, the right to publicly-funded free and universal quality health care, the right to publicly funded free and universal quality education up to a certain level, and a right to adequate old-age pension and disability benefits. The implementation of these rights together would cost less than 10 per cent of the GDP annually, which the country can easily afford. 

There comes a time in the life of every nation when it stands at the 

crossroads of history and must choose which way to go ... Lal Bahadur Shastri

Globalization benefits just minuscule percent of population to prosper, who are rich, educated and with access to power & resources. Trickle-down theory that says benefits for the wealthy trickle down to everyone else is unacceptable nonsense. In a large populous country like India, where most people are illiterate & poor, governments ignoring their welfare and chasing money making machines is nothing but abuse of principles of democracy and Constitution of India. Globalization is a concept propounded by developed & educated western countries to expand their reach for marketing their products and services rather than extending helping hand for upliftment of suffering masses in the world. India blindly embracing it for monetary gains, is not only height of insanity but also detrimental to its large segments of population. Development is not facilitating educated and/or rich people to prosper but enhancement of living standards of all classes of people simultaneously.

Modi & Trump's awkward hugging

Trump and Modi hugging awkwardly in White House, Washington

• He came, he saw, he hugged and hugged again, but he couldn't conquer the Yankee media.
• Narendra Modi hugging Donald Trump was so awkward, it was embarrassing even watching on TV.
• Nearly every aspect of his well-timed visit was kosher except for those hugs and handshakes. 
• Both men are narcissists and clearly adore preening under the spotlight.
• Someone should tell him there is always a cut-off point for such ardent displays of camaraderie and “true friendship”. 
• Modi bragged about his “stain-free” government. Which stain was he talking about? He was referring to his administration’s “zero tolerance” policy towards financial jigri pokiri.
• Now at least a serious attempt is being made to root out corruption at all levels. And the results are evident. Corruption can never be eliminated. Going after big guns and making examples of a few is a smart strategy. But what about nabbing seasoned political crooks too?
• It’s a shame the real “stains” in our society are the lynching spree back home. No explanation for the cow mania sweeping across the country and innocent victims of hate crimes. When a 15-year-old boy, returning from Delhi is pounced upon and killed for being a “beef-eater”, and the Prime Minister says nothing, his silence becomes an endorsement of the brutality. A Muslim was stabbed in the train has triggered off protests across India. Citizens feel deeply disturbed by what they see as a vicious campaign aimed at Muslims for being Muslims.
• Modi and his team pretended and let it go without condemnation. Today, gangs of jobless, frustrated and hostile young men roam the streets of India, looking for helpless victims wearing skull caps and sporting beards. Thousands of Hindu young men believe they can kill at will is the worst indictment of the government in power. Those hell-bent on violence under the guise of protecting cows are nothing but criminals. When their political bosses choose to shield them, the message sent out is lethal. Murderers are being condoned in Modi’s India. Cold-blooded killers confidently go on rampages and get away with heinous hate crimes. 
• When a country is on the brink of surrendering to bloodthirsty mobs, it cannot claim to be “stain-free”. What could be a bigger stain than the abuse and destruction of innocent human lives?
• It is time to stop cheap, misleading propaganda. People cannot be manipulated and fooled all that easily. The “elitist” protest marches don’t achieve very much, but they do perform an important role in a democracy that is supposed to respect the rights of each citizen, and listen to the voices of the oppressed.
• Modi has wisely undertaken a much-delayed damage control by issuing a statement of sorts in Gujarat (June 29, 2017), in which he has invoked Mahatma Gandhi’s name yet again and said violence will not to be tolerated in the name of “gau raksha”. He could have been direct and forceful in the condemnation of the lynchings. Why so late and so little, now?
• If the lynchings continue it will show him up as a non-leader. If they stop, citizens will wonder what took him so long to speak up. Before Modi sets off on yet another foreign trip, perhaps he should trouble himself to focus on other stains. The ones that can damage India’s long-term interests far more than a few mega crooks being thrown into the clink for tax evasion.

My View:
As long as Modi doesn't win the hearts of minorities i.e. Muslims and Christians etc, who are about 20% of population, he doesn't acquire any moral sanction to rule the nation. And he will never be a true leader. Majoritarianism is OK for ruling legally, but falls of moral right. His anti corruption tirade falls short of appointing Lok Pal & Lok Ayuktha while his predecessor Manmohan Singh offered to bring PM under the purview of Lok Pal, but cabinet rescinded. See the kind of election expenditure of BJP for which no explanation was given to nation. The fact that BJP is the most cash rich party these days with sources undisclosed and anti corruption measures falling short of controlling political corruption across the nation, Modi's actions are a strategy for mere publicity. Needless to say that Modi suffers from worst possible type of corruption; an insatiable desire for personal glory at any cost; an extremely deep moral and spiritual corruption. He might not have taken any bribes in recent years but there is no way he could have risen to his position without having made massive and horrendous economic & moral compromises.

IT in trouble, in India?

• The Indian IT industry’s worst fears seem to be coming true.
• H1B restrictions and automation resulted in uncertainty in Indian software industry apart from slow growth of global economy.
• Annual turn over IT in India is $150 billion (Rs. 975,000 crores). 78% clients from USA.
• The IT sector in India is generating 39 lakhs direct employments.
  (for every one direct IT job, there would be about three indirect employments)
• At least 1.8% of employees are likely to lose their jobs. It could go up to 5%.
• Hyderabad has 4 lakhs IT employees with supporting employees of 12 lakhs.
• 116 Big software companies exist in Hyderabad.
• The seven companies—Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL Tech, Cognizant, DXC, and Cap Gemini —and which together employ 1.24 million people, plan to let go of 4.5% of their workforce, i.e. at least 56,000 employees, in 2017. 
• TCS, the largest IT employer with close to 390,000 employees, does not have any plans to ask anyone to leave this year.
• All seven companies are still in denial mode and attribute the planned exits to a “marginal” increase in the number of poor performers on account of a “more rigorous” performance evaluation process. 
• India's IT sector has about 1.4 million mid-rung employees, who typically have 8-12 years of experience and earn Rs 12 lakh to Rs 18 lakh a year. 
• Salaries at higher levels are in the range of Rs.24-36 lakhs per annum, in Hyderabad. Seniors with experience of 10-20 years are being targeted. 
• Roles that were typically assigned to employees with over 10 years of experience are now going to machines. 
• Hiring process for 2017 is likely to be slow with IT majors expected to cut down intake of engineers by 40%.
• In Hyderabad at least 1,000 seniors with designation of Group Project Manager, Project Manager & Senior Architect are being pressurized to opt for VRS.
• Infosys announced that they would add 10,000 jobs in USA. For every US job, they would have to lay off 4 employees in India. Its growth was 13.3% in 2015-16 has slid down to 8.3% in 2016-17.
• In Wipro 10% of 1.81 lakh employees may get laid off as soon as performance review gets completed. They may be replaced with freshers.  
• DXC is in the midst of a three-year plan to reduce the number of offices in the country from 50 to 26. The company plans to ask 5.9%, or 10,000, of its 170,000 employees to leave this year.
• Tech Mahindra is planning to lay off an estimated 1,500 employees across all levels. Spokesperson said the company “has a process of weeding out bottom performers every year and this year is no different”. 
• Tech Mahindra has suspended salary revision process for employees who have been with the company for more than six years, until there is a management review. 
• Cap Gemini is likely to terminate 5% of its 1.13 lakh workforce. They have issued notices to 200 in Mumbai office.
• IT solutions company Cognizant is expected to retrench over 10,000 employees in the country. Out of which 1,000 or more are likely from Hyderabad. 
• Cognizant has been under pressure from investors to shore up margins, boost profitability, deliver growth and return cash to shareholders. Last month, Cognizant reached an agreement with activist investor Elliott Management, which holds 4 per cent stake, to boost its operating margins from 19.5 per cent in 2016 to 22 per cent by 2019 by streamlining costs, improving operational efficiency and aggressively employing automation to optimize traditional services.
• Cognizant recently announced a voluntary separation package for its employees. 
• Cognizant is asking employees (which includes Associate Director, Director, Vice President and even board members as well) to retire voluntarily, those who are grossing more than 40 lakhs with 9 months salary.
• Cap Gemini India CEO says 65% of IT employees are just not re-trainable. Probably, India will witness the largest unemployment in the middle level to senior level. Most IT employees come from low-grade engineering colleges.
• Nasscom says there is a need to re-train up to 1.5 million, or nearly half of its sectoral workforce. 
• Poor growth and pressure on profitability has prompted most companies to save on costs.
• The layoffs reflects their under-preparedness in adapting to newer technologies and dealing with the fallout from Trump’s protectionist policies.

The rise of protectionist politics in advanced economies has increased the pressure on companies there to outsource contracts to local companies, instead of firms in India. This is making growth prospect more difficult for Indian IT companies. But with a president as unpredictable as Trump at the helm of affairs, the fear is that things can get more serious over time. 

In the past, companies never facilitated nor encouraged employees to upgrade their skills, nor adapted modern technologies but continued with obsolete ones as a strategy to maintain attrition at minimum. Ridiculous as it seems, that the whining Indian IT jobs, once the most coveted in the country, are no longer secure and that morale in the sector is at a low.  The leaders are meeting clients, so they know about the change in (their) thinking. The bottom most guys adopt easier and learn. It is therefore, this middle management that is most difficult to change. The reality is that mid level managers never touches the outside world. Imagine someone with eight years of experience in something like manual testing with job going away due to automation and having a home loan or a child at a private school. There is huge human cost to this change and it will hit us hard. 

The bad news is that the worst is yet to come. 

My View:
Brexit marks globalization's biggest reversal since the end of WWII. Such a secular shift impacted growth, corporate profits and asset prices. It adds to the conditions for slowdown in global growth and increased the chances of further shocks. Three legs of globalization: immigration, trade and capital mobility are under varying degrees of duress. Global exports of goods & services are falling, global inter-bank lending retreating with growing political risks. Globalization has enabled rich becoming much richer, upper middle class becoming richer leaving majority lower middle class and poor remain unchanged. Societies have been vertically divided between have's and have not's. The vulgar and disproportionate utilization and display of resources by upper classes has become point of heart burn for majority lower classes giving rise to protectionism and nationalism exemplified by Trump's winning. Reversing these trends is no easy task. Indian IT sector growing on 100% export model carries unknown and uncontrollable overseas risks with no means of mitigation. Instead of 15-20% annualized growth if it contracts by just 5%, its existence comes under threat. Its devastating effects impacts one and all. Now the decision of exempting IT sector from stringent labour laws by granting them hire & fire powers at will, will come under scrutiny. Instead of feeling helpless we must change our economic growth model reducing global risk exposure to minimum, exploit our strengths and keep going carrying all sections of society together. Avoid comparison with China etc and endeavor should be to improve ourselves over previous year by at least 5%, if not more.